Shortgrass Song (8 page)

SEVEN

Ella thought she would go crazy with “Camptown Races.” Caleb played it all day and night. In the bed of the milk wagon, at the bank of the creek, on the floor of the dugout, “doo-dah, doo-dah” and “oh, doo-dah day” rang, rather haltingly, but repeatedly, from the lips of the young musician, accompanied by a somewhat rhythmical strumming of deadened strings.

Pete and Matthew got to stay with the cows during the day and only had to listen to it at night. Snake Woman spent most of her time watering the truck patch in the creek bottom. The men only heard “doo-dah, doo-dah” when they dragged the logs to the cabin site behind the oxen. Buster had the audacity to encourage the boy.

When Caleb finally played “Camptown Races” all the way through in the key of G without having to stop for his fingers to find the chords, it was a pivotal moment for his mother. Then he started practicing in the key of C, for which he had to learn a new chord, and the process renewed itself, but at least Ella got to hear the standard in a different key, and for that respite from monotony, she gave thanks.

One day when Ella was enjoying Caleb's lunch—for he couldn't play “Camptown Races” while he ate—Buster invaded her solitude by knocking on the roof pole at the door of the dugout.

“What do you want?” she said. “I hope you haven't hurt yourself. I'm in no mood to do any doctoring.”

“No, ma'am, I'm not hurt. I just wanted to give you those seeds.”

“What seeds?”

“The wildflower seeds for your garden.” He handed her the paper envelopes, labeled with pencil and rattling faintly with tiny kernels.

Ella opened one and looked in.

“Those are the firewheels,” Buster said. “I wrote what kind it is on the outside of the envelopes.”

“The proper name is Indian blankets,” Ella said. She shuffled the rest of the envelopes and read the names of the flowers. “If you're so smart, I guess you know when to plant them.”

“I suppose now's as good a time as any. The flowers are droppin' 'em about now, and I guess they know how to grow their own sprouts. I'd put a little dirt over 'em to keep 'em from gettin' blown away or eaten up by birds. I don't suppose you'll see 'em grow till next spring though.”

The strains of “Camptown Races” came from the dugout, and Ella rolled her eyes.

“I don't suppose I'll see them grow at all,” she said. “Of all the notions!”

Buster wanted to hear the boy play, but he could tell Miss Ella was in no mood for company. He put his hat back on and climbed the creek bank.

He returned to work, round-notching the logs for the cabin. He had a knack for making the joints fit flush, so Ab had left all the notching to him. The next time he paused to wipe the sweat from his brow, he looked toward the creek and saw Ella on her knees in the flower garden, planting the seeds.

*   *   *

Ab had no intention of patterning his cabin after the models he had seen in Denver. Those poor examples of architecture were mere shells of green logs on bare ground, mud chinked and roofed with sod. They served as temporary quarters to the transient prospectors. But Ab had come to Monument Park for good. He would build to last.

To lift and stack the logs, the men rigged a gin pole in the middle of the cabin foundation. A rope ran through a pulley on the top of the gin pole. The oxen pulled the rope to hoist the heavy logs into their overlapping positions. Ella drove the oxen. The men and the older two boys guided the logs into place. Caleb sat in the shade of the covered wagon and practiced the key of C. The men chopped to the rhythm of “oh, doo-dah day.”

One afternoon the music abruptly stopped. “Hey, somebody's comin'!” Caleb shouted.

Ab was six timbers high on one corner, watching Buster work a log with the drawknife. He looked across the creek, where the Arapaho Trail led from the mountains, and saw a distinctive herd of beasts following a rider toward the cabin.

An old mountain man rode up the cutbank on a chestnut gelding with a white rump, the white rump harboring chestnut spots the size of silver dollars. A mare trailing behind was white with bay spots from the shoulders back, and solid bay forward. An eagle feather stuck out of a beaver top hat. Stiff shocks of iron-gray hair bristled out from under the dusty brim, ran down the jowls, climbed the cheeks, hid the mouth, and brushed the collar of a bright red gingham shirt. The butt of a long rifle jutted from a fringed saddle sleeve.

“It's old Cheyenne Dutch,” Ab said, climbing down from the corner.

Cheyenne Dutch had come west thirty years ago to trap beavers and trade with the Indians. He had kept a trading post on the South Platte for the first fourteen years, until he lost it in a game of three-card monte. Then he had killed the new owner with a Cheyenne lance and burned the place to the ground. He had wandered among the Indians since. It was rumored that he had a wife with every tribe in the Rockies.

Five dogs prowled at the heels of Dutch's gelding as he approached the unfinished cabin, one sorrowful sway-backed specimen almost dragging her teats on the ground. The old trader tightened his fur-trimmed reins when he arrived, and reached into a sack tied behind his cantle.

“Bitch whelped,” he said. “Want one?” From the sack he lifted a whining puppy by the nape of the neck.

Matthew and Pete dropped their tools and raced to get their hands on the puppy. Dutch let them handle two of them so they wouldn't pull the one apart.

“Can we have 'em, Papa?” Pete begged.

Ab folded his arms across his chest. “What kind of dog?” he asked.

“Bitch's there,” Dutch said, pointing. “She's hound. Other half's wolf for all I know.”

“What will you trade?”

“Tobacco?” Dutch suggested.

“We don't keep tobacco here,” Ella said, leaving her oxen to confront the visitor. She had an instinct for judging some people, and she didn't like this Cheyenne Dutch.

The mountain man refused to look at her, preferring to do his trading with men. “Don't you smoke, Holcomb?”

Ab shook his head.

“Whiskey?”

“That either,” Ella said.

“You don't drink?”

“No,” Ab said.

Dutch grinned, gold-capped teeth glinting through his whiskers. “Well, let's see. Don't smoke, don't drink. Probably ain't got no use for that squaw down there in the corn, either. Swap her, and I'll give you the whole goddamn litter.”

“Sir,” Ella said, “we don't bargain in human flesh. And mind your language around these children.”

“Holcomb, ain't you even allowed to cuss?”

“No,” Ab said. “Will you take some flour or coffee or something?”

The trader scratched his beard a moment. “Some coffee for one pup. Sugar for another. That's fair. Them dogs'll help that squaw keep the cows out of your crops.”

“All right,” Ab said, “we'll swap.”

Matthew and Pete hollered for joy and took their pets under the wagon to play with. Caleb put the mandolin in the milk wagon and hung over Pete's shoulders to pet one of the puppies. He knew better than to get close to Matthew's dog. He wished his father would have traded for three pups, but he was afraid to ask for another, thinking his mother might change her mind about the mandolin if he got greedy.

As Ella went to the dugout to get the coffee and sugar together, Dutch scrutinized the black man up on the wall. Buster hadn't missed a lick with the drawknife since the trader arrived. He liked to work steady once he got going on something.

“Where'd you get him?” Dutch asked, pointing at Buster.

“That's Buster. He works here.”

Buster paused long enough to tip his hat to the visitor, but Dutch shook off the courtesy and walked around the rising cabin walls to inspect the work.

“I sure like those spotted horses,” Ab said. “What happened to the two others you had last winter?”

“Sold 'em. I'm goin' up to get some more come fall.”

“Where do you get them?”

“Nez Perce. Up in the Palousey country.”

“Indian horses?” Ab said. “That one's a gelding.”

“Nez Perce geld 'em. That one there wouldn't sire spotted foals, so they cut him. They know about breedin'. They breed for the spots. Magic. Bulletproofs 'em.”

Buster watched the feathered top hat over the wall of logs opposite his corner. Then he caught Cheyenne Dutch looking back at him between the stacked logs, glaring from the corner of one eye. The mountain man's stare made him shudder and look away. He went back to his work with the drawknife.

Ab was studying the spotted horses. They had good muscle, sure feet, and alert eyes. The eyes had whites, like human eyes. The horses looked smart and seemed built for a saddle. They were long in the pastern for a smooth trot, short in the cannon for sound legs, and just big enough to carry a man fast.

“I've heard you rode with Sam Walker in Mexico,” Dutch said.

Ab nodded.

“You'll know a thing or two about horses then.”

“I'd like to buy a couple of these Nez Perce mounts from you this winter,” he said, “if you're coming back this way.”

“Maybe,” Dutch said. “I'm goin' horselike myself.”

“What?” Ab said.

“Seen it in a dream: me goin' horselike over the mountain of a nighttime. Light moon. I'm part horse on a light moon. Breed my women horselike, too.” He shifted his eye toward Buster again, leering between the logs.

When Ella gave Dutch his sugar and coffee, he mounted the gelding and rode toward the creek, his mare and five dogs trailing behind.

Buster climbed down from the corner. “What was he talking about? Horselike in his dreams and all?”

“Don't pay him any mind,” Ab said. “He says things like that. He's a little touched.”

EIGHT

A noise roused Buster from his sleep in the milk wagon. He didn't know at first what had wakened him. The moon was three-quarters full, and he could see well the features of the plains and the shoulders of Pikes Peak looming in the southwest. He had almost decided to go back to sleep when the sound came again. It was a voice half human and half wild. It had come from the Holcombs's covered wagon. He had never heard Snake Woman's voice before but knew it was hers.

He threw his piece of wagon sheet off, slid over the edge of the milk wagon, and ran quietly to the back of the covered wagon to listen. A violent movement and a grunt tempted him to look into the wagon bed. He saw the feather waving at the back of the beaver top hat.

Cheyenne Dutch had Snake Woman pinned facedown on her blankets. He held her arms together behind her back and kept her legs apart with his knees. He was pulling the dress Ella had made for her over her hips.

Buster grabbed a handful of iron-gray hair and gingham shirt and pulled Dutch out of the wagon backward, dropping him headfirst on the ground. Dutch tried to get up, but Buster kicked him to keep him down. “Mister Ab!” he yelled.

Snake Woman pulled a wad of cloth out of her mouth and looked out of the wagon. She saw the mountain man trying to get up. Buffalo Head kicked at him, but the old trader grabbed Buffalo Head's foot and threw him down. Dutch then sprang from the ground and dove for the black man, but Buffalo Head kicked both feet, carried the old trader on his heels, and launched him over the creek bank.

Snake Woman did not know what it meant, but it was so fantastic that she could only take it as her second sign from the spirit world.

Buster ran to the milk wagon for his horse pistol. “Mister Ab!” he yelled again. He heard Dutch climbing the creek bank. He opened the crate and found his gun. When he looked up, he found Dutch hatless at the top of the bank, a long knife in his hand. Buster aimed the pistol.

“Go ahead and shoot, you buck nigger. I'm a spotted-rump Palousey horse and bulletproof!”

“Mister, you don't go horselike around here,” Buster said, trying to find some reason in Dutch's jabber. “That moon ain't full anyhow.”

Dutch looked at the moon. He started speaking an Indian tongue and stalked closer to Buster with the knife as he raved.

“Hold it, Dutch!” Ab was coming barefoot from the dugout with his Walker Colt. Ella ran two steps behind. Snake Woman jumped out of the wagon and sprinted toward the half-built log house.

“Buster, what in Hades is going on?” Ab asked.

“He was in there with the Snake Woman, trying to take his pleasure.”

“Oh, my!” Ella screamed. “You filthy devil! Get off of our land!”

“Woman, this place belongs to the gods of the red men. Palousey is my name, spotted horse god of the mountains! You'll catch my wind and fire and blizzard for your tongue, white woman!”

“Ab, shoot him if he won't go.”

“I won't go till I kill that big buck nigger,” Dutch said.

“Oh! I'll shoot you myself for saying such a thing!” She tried to pull the revolver away from her husband.

“Calm down, Ella. He's crazy as a coot.”

Buster heard the half-animal squall again and saw Snake Woman pass in front of his pistol sights. She wielded the ax overhead and brought it down on Dutch's shoulder. The mountain man dropped his knife, roared like a bear, knocked Snake Woman against the wagon with his left fist, and staggered back to the brink of the creek bank.

Buster moved in closer, protecting Snake Woman with his pistol. He could see the glisten of blood running down the gingham shirt.

“Give me that!” Ella demanded. She pulled at Ab's Colt, but he wouldn't let her have it. “Give me your pistol,” she said, running to Buster. She wrenched the weapon from Buster's hand, pointed it, closed her eyes, and blew away a respectable chunk of the creek bank. “Fiddlesticks! Buster, where's your powder?”

Cheyenne Dutch leapt silently over the bank and ran for the trees across the creek, stooping for his beaver hat on the run. Ab went to the edge and watched him to make sure he wasn't trying to double back. He saw the weird gait of the wounded trader running apelike up the bald hill along the Arapaho Trail.